Cracking the spine of the first novel on the Not the Booker shortlist is generally a nerve-racking experience. I don't usually know much about the author at all, not least because the books are typically first or second novels by young writers.
Kate Atkinson is a different proposition. She's so well established, she's won an MBE. There is no denying that Atkinson's recognition is well earned: she has close to 20 years of consistently good work behind her, beginning with the Whitbread award-winning Behind the Scenes at the Museum. I'm told that her Jackson Brodie crime novels can hold their own, and critics generally love her.
Even so, I had a few worries after learning the premise of Life After Life. The cover asks: "What would you do if you had the chance to live your life again and again, until you finally got it right?" The novel isn't quite as straightforward as that question suggests, but it essentially sums things up. Ursula Todd, born in 1910, gets numerous chances to relive her life. Every time Todd dies, Atkinson brings her back and gives her a chance to relive the moments that killed her first time around – and so to carry on living.
The idea seems at once commonplace and wacky. It presents the kind of "what if" questions all of us ask, but does so in a medium that might be considered unsuited to deal with them. As John Self asked in the comments of the last Not the Booker prize post: "Why should we care about her deaths when she has been [warning: ZX Spectrum terminology approaching] POKEd to receive infinite lives?" Where would the novel's tension come from, if there were going to be such apparently low stakes?
I became even more troubled almost immediately after opening the book. I particularly fretted over the novel's second sentence: "She had come in from the rain and drops of water still trembled like delicate dew on the fur coats of some of the women inside." It seemed almost tautological. Was "dew" too obvious to compare to drops of water? And did those two "ins" jar when they were so close to each other?
Fortunately, if such problems continued, I stopped noticing. Atkinson's fine storytelling and sharp eye for domestic detail took over. Soon I was laughing along as Ursula's mother, Sylvie, accompanied her fearsome cook Mrs Glover to a train station "for the pleasure of seeing her go". Soon, too, I felt a lump in my throat when Ursula was pulled into the sea by a wave: "her little legs bicycled beneath her trying to find purchase on the sand … No one came. And there was only water. Water and more water. Her helpless little heart was beating wildly, a bird trapped in her chest."
To answer John Self's question then, Atkinson carries off the trick with vivid, quality writing. It's all too easy to imagine your own child in that scene in the sea. Along with making her descriptions seem universal, Atkinson does a good job, in a few brief pages, of generating sympathy on a more particular level. I quickly started to like Ursula and her family, each and every time she comes back. Atkinson also consistently makes Ursula sympathetic, and in doing so makes her death matter.
I enjoyed trying to spot the moment that sets Ursula's train running off the tracks, and to work out how Atkinson might reset the signals next time around. There is real playfulness in these revisited moments and repetition never breeds dullness. Instead, we try to spot the differences and look for refractions of the same scene, considering the permutations of what is said and done. It can provide an enjoyable and interactive experience.
Clearly, I enjoyed the book far more than John Self, but I do keep coming back to his point of view. There's something essentially daft about the premise. Self also asked: "Did Ursula know about her previous lives? Are they happening at the same time? If so, how can others change as well as Ursula? Do they have renewable lives, too?" These questions also bugged me – until Atkinson began to provide enjoyably elusive and inconclusive answers. She is clearly aware of the issues and has fun exploring them, without ever pressing too hard. The trouble is, I began to suspect if she pressed any harder the whole house of cards would start to collapse.
There were other problems. I enjoyed the depiction of Ursula and her family (her hateful older brother Maurice providing especially good entertainment). I believed in them as rather Forsterian members of the pre-second world war middle classes. But Atkinson was less successful when she tried to expand on the world stage. There are several scenes involving Hitler and Eva Braun that just don't work. The best that can be said about her depiction of the Nazi leader is that it doesn't seem off key. There was nothing here that I didn't feel I had read or seen before. I learned that Hitler was "charismatic", and that this wasn't necessarily a good thing. I learned that Eva Braun liked pictures and dreaming of film stars … This is well-trodden ground, even without the repetitions. Sadly, this novel suffers from the banality of evil dictators.
Back on the home front, there were harrowing descriptions of the blitz, and some good evocations of the camaraderie of the Air Warden teams. But even here there were problems. When someone expressed a decidedly non PC opinion he is chided, with reference to the Nazis: "It is intolerance that has brought us to this pass." A commendable sentiment, but one among many that felt more apt to 2013 than 1945. Here, as in so much of the book, there's plenty to like, and an abundance of human warmth, but it just isn't convincing. There is much to enjoy – but not quite enough to admire.
Next week: The Trader of Saigon by Lucy Cruikshanks
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